Enrichment Games

Dog enrichment involves mentally and physically stimulating activities that engage a dog's mind and body. This is achieved through activating their senses: taste, sound, touch and smell by encouraging activities that encourage dogs to engage in their natural behaviours. Things like digging, running, interacting socially, exploring and smelling different things.

A Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog interacts with an assortment of stuffed toys on a tiled patio, with a background of green trees and shrubs while on holiday at The Dog Cottage, a luxury boutique dog hotel on the Gold Coast in Queensland,

We love playing enrichment games with our guests for two reasons:

  1. They absolutely love it. Seeing them having fun and knowing it is doing them so much good is our ideal dopamine hit.

  2. Research shows that there are many benefits including reducing stress, promoting relaxation, promoting a sense of accomplishment, reducing anxiety, strengthening bonds with people, improving resilience and preventing and treating undesirable behaviours.

We engage in the below styles of enrichment:

  1. Cognitive and behavioural enrichment: Mental stimulation style ie problem-solving tasks, memory tasks. The benefits of this style of enrichment is that it promotes a calmer and less stressed dog. Studies show that it can also slow age related cognitive decline in dogs.

  2. Scent enrichment: Exposing dogs to scents such as food or dog-friendly herbs hidden in snuffle mats has been shown to increase dogs’ level of engagement. It reduces stress related behaviours and increases rest time.

  3. Environmental enrichment: This involves exposing a dog to environmental complexity for example walks, time in a dog park and toys.  This type of enrichment can increase activity levels, encourage exploratory behaviour, and reduce undesirable and problem behaviours.

  4. Feeding enrichment: Dogs (especially Cavalier King Charles Spaniels) are less likely to get bored with activities that involve food, for example toys with treats hidden in or under them, or a puzzle feeder.

  5. Musical enrichment: Research indicates that dogs respond well to relaxing music, especially classical music. Reports indicate that they bark less and relax more. We like to play calming dog music from The Pawsome Rescues You Tube channel while our furry guests are dining, as well as relaxing and napping.

  6. Social enrichment: Our furry friends are social animals and they need social interaction with other dogs and people. Your furry angel will love spending time with our resident dogs. They’ll also love their daily visits from our resident Nana and Grandad, who are a huge fan favourite and who give amazing cuddles.

A Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog plays an enrichment brain game called a snuffle mat while on holiday at The Dog Cottage, a luxury boutique dog hotel on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.
A puppy Blenheim Cavalier King Charles Spaniel plays an interactive enrichment toy while on holiday at The Dog Cottage, a luxury boutique dog hotel on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Overflowing Toy Box

When it’s raining outside and we can’t go for our daily exploratory walk or visit the private dog park, then we set up our back patio into an enrichment haven.

Our oversized dog toy box is a favourite of our furry guests. When the weather is unsuitable for a walk or treat hunt in the Sensory Garden then we love to set up a fun Sniffari Treat Hunt on our back porch. We hide treats inside our toy box, we scatter toys around the house and hide treats under them. We also sneak treats inside our dog toys so our furry guests have to sniff them out.